Overview

Sketches in the Theory of Culture is a remarkable work by all measures. Written by Zygmunt Bauman when he was still a professor in Poland, and originally intended for publication in 1968, it was suppressed by the Polish government in the wave of repression following the protests in March of that year. For decades, it was thought to be lost. Astonishingly, it survived in the form of an uncorrected set of proofs which was recently discovered, and is the basis of this edition. Now published in English for the first time, this book sheds new light on Bauman’s work prior to his emigration and illuminates the intellectual climate of Poland in the late 1960s. Bauman’s pursuit of a semiotic theory of culture includes a discussion of processes of individualization and the intensification of global ties, anticipating themes that became central to his later work. Though this book stands as a testament to a historical moment, it also transcends it. ‘[W]e live in an age that seems, for the first time in human history, to acknowledge cultural multiplicity as an innate and fixed feature of the world, one which gives rise to new forms of identity that are at ease with plurality, like a fish in water’, writes Bauman – a statement that is as true today as it was when he penned it in the 1960s. Sketches in the Theory of Culture is a strikingly prescient reflection on culture and society by one of the most influential social thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities and to the many readers of Bauman’s work.

Full Product Details

Author:   Zygmunt Bauman (Universities of Leeds and Warsaw) ,  Katarzyna Bartoszynska
Publisher:   John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Imprint:   Polity Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.612kg
ISBN:  

9781509528295

ISBN 10:   1509528296
Pages:   300
Publication Date:   28 September 2018
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

A Message in a Bottle: on the Recovered Work of Zygmunt Bauman vii Dariusz Brzeziński From the Author 1 Part I Sign and Culture I The Origins of the Semiotic Theory of Culture, or the Crisis of Cultural Anthropology 7 II Towards a Semiotic Theory of Culture 31 III Man and Sign 62 IV The Problem of Universals and the Semiotic Theory of Culture 94 V Some Research Problems in the Semiotic Theory of Culture 119 Part II Culture and Social Structure I Cultural and Extra-Cultural Organization of Society 155 II Economics, Culture, and Typologies of Societies 172 III Cultural Determinants of the Research Process 203 IV Three Observations About Problems of Contemporary Education 216 V Masses, Classes, Elites: Semiotics and the Re-Imagination of the Sociological Function of Culture 231 Afterword 251 Zygmunt Bauman, 2016 Notes 256 Index 269

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Author Information

Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds.

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